The CWM: the 4rth or 5th class debate

A perfect day for Organ mountain climbing. Overcast and calm, cool temps but not cold. I wish it could be this good all year. I struck out to climb the CWM (Welsh spelling, pronounced COOM) with a co-worker and fellow engineer Chris Benic. He's been interested in hiking in the Organs for a while now, and this week-end just seemed to work for us. He hasn't climbed or hiked for a while, so we chose something in Rabbit Ears canyon because it is an area I'm very familiar with. Still, I've never summited the CWM so we would have our fair share of new ground to cover. I brought my trusty 30m 8mm rope, and a handful of slings, biners and nuts, in case we got into a situation which would require a tricky descent. Sasha came along too, and Chris brought his yellow lab, Buddy. we had a slow approach, but conditions in the canyon were excellent. There was more water than I've ever seen running down the canyon. Large green pools provided ample opportunity for the dogs to splash around. We ended up leaving the dogs tethered at one of the nicer pools at the start of the gully which leads up to the saddle between NRE and the CWM.

We didn't encounter snow until almost at the top of the ridge. The final 100m or so was up a steep snow gully. It was consolidated enough, and steep enough where an ice-axe would have been prudent. Unfortunately I hadn't brought any. I forged ahead kicking steps, but Chris quickly reached the limits of his comfort zone. I offered to tie him into a rope and belay him up, but even this didn't ease his mind. He opted to wait at the bottom of the gully as I pressed forward to the summit.

At the top of the steep snow was a short 20m chimney section. It seemed about as difficult as the chimney in Boyers chute, although Ingraham describes this route as medium 4rth and Boyer's as 5.4. I really couldn't see much difference. At the top of the chimney is a short section of face climbing before the saddle between NRE and the CWM is gained. The north face of the NRE is beautiful, covered in a stubbly grey lichen, and slashed by numerous crack systems. There could be a lot of potential for routes here. Turning to the CWM, a short headwall of slabby climbing gained the summit slab. Again, I'd call this bit of climbing 5th class, but it probably was chalked up as medium 4th. The summit slab was like walking on a pitched roof. It was not too steep that I couldn't walk around fairly comfortably, but it was steep enough where a fall would be difficult if not impossible to stop. It is a beautiful summit, and worth a repeat trip.

I was able to down-climb most of the ascent route, but set up a short rappel for the chimney section. In drier conditions, I probably would tackle down-climbing this as well, but since I had a short rope it wasn't a problem to rappel.

So now that I've got another of Ingraham's "4th class" routes under my belt, I think I'm getting a better picture of his grading scheme. Its my guess that many if not all of his medium-hard 4th class descriptions would go by low fifth in today's standards. These kind of routes can be readily scrambled by a climber of skill and competency at higher grades. It also appears that many of these routes were roped up, which agrees with my interpretation of a 5th class route as something most people would rope up for. As for Boyer's, I think it may ahve received a more modern grade in the writing of Ingraham's guide after the fact. Many of the NRE routes have actual YSD grades, as opposed to the more obscure routes which merely say low/mid/high 3rd/4rth/5th. Now all I've got to do is climb a handful more of these old trade routes to verify this hypothesis.

Dingleberry

We've been getting a fair amount of snow, at least it appears that way up in the Organs. Since I just recently retrieved my ice climbing gear from NH, I was eager to get high in the Organs to find a target for my dull Axes. Bob Cort was game for an ascent of Dingleberry, and if time allowed, we would try to hit Wildcat's summit as well.

Since we were expecting a fair amount of snow and even ice, we opted to put on our hard-plastic mountaineering boots straight from the start. This turned out to be a major pain for most of the day. Scrambling over dry granite slabs and boulders in hard-

plastic boots was trying. When we finally got to snow and ice int he gully, it wasn't enough to merit crampons. Yes, the boots kept us dry, but a decent all-season hiking boot would have served us better. The ice-axes however, did come in handy. The gully leading up to the Organ ridge had some icy and steep sections where a tool came in quite handy for providing a good solid hold to advance. I even found a spot of ice to practice my swing, which is miles away from being able to tackle WI 5 type ice anymore. Good thing I live in the desert SW.

We reached the ridge-top and peered over onto the other side. The east side has a steep tree-filled gully and an imposing SE face. The Ingraham description mentioned climbing a number of pitches of the SE face, but it definitely didn't look like 3rd class. instead we took a gully on the west side of the ridge (but very close to the saddle). this may actually be the SE side of the peak, but we didn't check it versus a compass. The gully ends at a steep blocky and brushy climb for about 100 ft before the summit was reached.

The summit was superb. throughout the climb, clouds had been moving in and around us, but as we summitted, we were above the clouds. There's always something uplifting about being on top of clouds. We snacked on lunch and I dug around for the summit register, and then we were socked in by clouds. To my dismay, I did not find a summit register, although there very well could be one buried under some snow. I left a new register anyways.

We opted to descend on the North side down a gully I had seen from the Wildcat summit. This gully was socked in with snow, and gave us a real taste of winter conditions. We kitted ourselves out in our full alpine gear and plunged down the snow until we encountered a steep drop that looked difficult to down-climb in its winter conditions. Fortunately, we had some 30m ropes with us and two short rappels got us down to the upper Wildcat Gully, which we descended back to the car. this last part made my day. The winter conditions made me feel like I was back in Smuggler's notch, caught in a blizzard, trying to get back down before conditions got even worse. Plus the juxtoposition of coming up from a hot arid desert and encountering winter/alpine conditions was immensely satisfying. If only it could stay cold a bit longer and grow some real ice for us to climb next week-end!

Wildcat Summit Register

The Wildcat summit register was tiny compared to the North Rabbit Ear SR. It fit in an old-style metal Kodak film canister, and consisted of two folded pieces of paper, moldy and faded with various entries scattered around the page seemingly without any order. I think it is quite possible that recent summitters have not written on it for fear of destroying it. There are no entires that were dated after 1989 and I find it somewhat un-likely that this peak hasn't seen an ascent by someone in that time period.



Since the entire log was only 4 pages, it's easy enough to post the scanned images of the log here. While the actual documents are a little easier to read than the scans, they're not much better:

Wildcat Summit: Regular Route

Looking up Wildcat Gully (Dingleberry is the peak on the right)

Not two weeks after scouting out Wohlt's Welt, I came back to climb all the way to the top. My goal was to summit Wildcat via the Regular route, reportedly only 3rd class, but with many warnings about the tediousness of the bushwhacking. I left the car at about 1mile up Modoc Mine rd (before the gate) at about 8am and made good time up to the entrance to Wildcat gully. There was 4-8" of snow in the shady portions near the entrance to the gully, but the gully itself

was not too bad. It appears that a pretty serious rock-fall or other erosion event has occurred in the past few years and wipe out most of the undergrowth for the first half of the gully. While in this portion of the gully, I checked out climbing possibilities on either side. A nice slab formation on the south side of the gulley looks like it could provide a few pitches of decent climbing, but the better wall was the one on the North, which Ingraham calls the Guardian Buttress in his descrption of the Wildcat climbs. There were several nice looking steep crack systems on this wall, and the approach isn't that bad. Could be worth checking out.

Pictures from the lower Wildcat Gully showing rock-fall damage

The going began to get a little tougher near the top of the Guardian Buttress level. The rock-fall event must have occurred slightly lower, so for the last 100ft or so, I had to navigate around snow covered shrubs. This was easier by clinging to the North wall where passage could be found. The top of the lower Wildcat gully is clearly demarcated at a narrow saddle-like spot. Ingraham calls this the "narrow saddle, on whose left rises a sharp, small spire, into a wide valley running down west under Wildcat's SW face (the Swale)". I think I'll just call this place "the Swale".

At the "Swale"

From this point up to the saddle between Wildcat and Dingleberry, I had to battle up waist-deep snow drifts. I'd try to cling to one side of the gully, but usually could not keep it up for long as the sides were too steep or icy. Just below the saddle is a large oak tree, but before I got there, I had decided to take to the rock wall on the north side of the gully and start my ascent of Wildcat's final rock face. The first hundred feet of 3rd class scrambling felt harder due to the ice and snow obscuring the rock and making it slippery. But once I popped out onto the S. ridge and sunshine, it got a lot smoother. The rest of the South Ridge was pleasant 3rd class rock-hopping all the way to the summit.

Summit Shots

I replaced the summit register with a new one, and took the old one down with me for archiving. This register was a tiny old metal film canister (Kodak) and had only two moldy sheets of paper in it. I'll post the full ascent log soon. Looking to the North, the summit of Razorback is just a short hop away. I was almost tempted to go over to it, but the short hop involves a steep down-climb to an exposed saddle, and with ice and snow, it probably wouldn't be as easy as it looked. Besides, I need to have some good reasons to come back up here. Razorback looks like a great climb. To the South Dingleberry seems massive. there were a few climbable gullies ascending from the Wildcat gully and I considered trying to get up one of these on my way down. But this would be an extra hour or so of time and I wasn't sure what time it was to begin with. I decided it was best to head on down, and get back to Liz and my birthday feast.

For the descent was almost the same as the ascent except I tried to avoid the 3rd class down-climbing by taking a brushy gully on the SE side of Wildcat's peak. Even with a few feet of deep snow-drifts, the bushwhacking was egregious. I can only imagine how terrible it would be in summer conditions. The gully dropped me down on the East side of the Wildcat-Dingleberry saddle, and I had to climb up an icy chimney to get back onto the saddle and start making my way down. Going down the deep snow was much easier than coming up, I butt-slid the whole way down. I was back to my car at 2:15. Not bad time, and pretty much in-line with ingraham's suggested3hr time to summit.

The SW face of Wildcat

Temps throughout the hike were pretty reasonable, hovering around the 40s for most of the gully. It felt much colder than this with the wind though, and I quickly had to use my wind-protection layers to stay warm. I also was not fully prepared for the snow, I didn't have me gaiters. How I could have forgotten these, I don't know. My feet got soaked on the ascent and at the summit I changed into dry wool socks and put on "vapor-barriers" to keep my feet relatively dry. this little trick I picked up in Quebec, and consists of placing plastic shopping bags over your feet in your boot. You lose any kind of breathability, but you keep the worst of the snow-water off your socks, so it ends up being better if you're not sweating too hard. I certainly enjoy hiking these peaks in the winter. now if only the days were longer...

Wohlt's Welt Reconnaissance

I took Levin out this afternoon to do some reconnaissance; we hiked up the Modoc Mine Rd and then found Wohlt's Welt. This is what Ingraham describes as "The Highroad to the Central Organs" and from it one can access several peaks including Wildcat and Dingleberry.

Here is Google Earth's rendition of the route up to the saddle between Wildcat and Dingleberry. We only hiked up to the top of Wohlt's Welt, which is the gentle ridge or "welt" that goes from the Modoc rd up to the foot of the rocky cliffs. As far as bush-beating goes, it wasn't too bad, with ocatillo being the dominant shrub/obstacle. It is fairly steep though and there isn't much of a trail so it is slow going. Total distance from the top of Wohlt's Welt down to the Baylor Pass Rd is about 2.5 miles (according to Google Earth) and took us about 1.5 hrs to cover.

View from top of Wohlt's Welt looking at Wildcat and Dingleberry

Being the first time I took Levin out bushwhacking, I can't resist posting some pictures of him:

North Rabbit Ear Summit Register

Below is my transcription of the NRE summit register. It was immensely fun to do this, read all the entries from climbers past, learn about new routes. It sure has me psyched to get back up there and climb more. Also I'm now eager to get my hands on the other summit registers and sift through them.

I did my best to record all the original entries, but some pages are badly torn, weathered, or simply hard to read. I noted this in [brackets] in most places. I think I'll print this entire register out on sturdy paper and replace it back with the summit register so that others can read the history. I also will try to archive the originals (and original copy since the 1954-1969 entries were already re-copied once) at NMSU or some other local archive. Finally, the left-hand column estimates the Recorded Summit Ascent # by ascent party. It is approximate, especially in the later decades of the register as pages may have been lost, etc.. By this approximation, our last ascent was the 159th.



Some pictures of the summit register:

North Rabbit Ear: Boyer's Chute

I was contacted a few weeks ago through Mountain Project by a climber in Durango Colorado who was looking for partners in the Las Cruces area for bagging some of the peaks in our range. It seemed kind of strange that someone from Colorado would drive all the way down here (probably 10 hrs or more) when there are so many high peaks in his own state. But since I am also interested in climbing as many of the Organ Mtn peaks as I can, I mailed him back.

John Bregar was his name, a retired geologist and president of a local mountain club. He made it clear right off the bat that he was not into highly technical routes, and would not be interested in routes harder than 5.5, but that he enjoyed brush-beating up SW desert peaks and wanted to get up some of the more interesting Organ mtn peaks. Many of these have 3rd or 4rth class routes up them described in Ingraham's guide and I've been wanting to check them out as well. After a few email exchanges we settled on climbing Boyer's Chute on the North Rabbit Ear (NRE).

We left Las Cruces early, around 5:45 in order to start the trail-head before the sun had risen. We took only a single 60m rope and light alpine rack. Neither of us wore a watch, so my timeline isn't much good from here on. but it felt that we made good time hiking up the Rabbit Ear Canyon. We left Sasha at the base of the route. a 3rd class slab leading into a deep cleft on the west side of the NRE. After a few hundred feet of 3rd class scrambling, the chute narowed down to a 4rth class chimney. At the top of this was a ratty poot rappel station. This station happened to be at the top of a narrow fin of rock which separates Boyer's Chute from an adjacent chute to the north which appears more difficult. It also looked fun to scramble out to the edge of the fin, but we didn't have time to explore it properly. Next time.

An easy 100ft further and we encountered the first bit of 5th class, a narrow spot with a large chock stone to get around. Total height of this 5th class section is only about 20ft. The easier way is to the right, and John had previously led this way. However, he described it as mostly un-protectable and we opted to try a crack to the left of the chock. John tried leading it first, but quickly learned that it was harder than 5.5. It involves a bit of clever foot-work and stemming, possibly the use of a hand-jam to surmount. I estimated the move to be about 5.8, but it's been a while since I've done much climbing and I could be off. Immediately above this section is another fixed anchor, wire rope and rap-rings.

150 ft further up is the 5.4 crux of the route, a deep chimney with another large chock stone. The right hand wall had some nice cracks for holds.protection making the climb feel very secure. The 5th class climbing is about 30-40 ft long and an old and decrepit bolted rappel anchor is at the top of it.

The chute turns into more of a right-facing corner system at this point, and stays between 3rd and 4rth class for a while. There was an awesome live-oak in this corner, twisted and growing out across a slab of rock in a way that bonsai cultivators get wet-dreams about. Photos could do no justice. At the top of the corner is a final 4rth class head-wall and then we were at the summit.

I had the fore-sight to bring a new summit register and pen. The existing summit register is really something, providing history all the way back to the first recorded ascent in 1954. It had been painstakingly re-copied in the late 60s. The newer note-book which we signed dated back to the 80s. Since my last ascent in the spring of 2008, only 5 other people had recorded ascents, all via boyer's Chute (and often solo). I carefully packed the fragile records in a zip=lock bag to take down with me. Over the next few weeks, I plan to transcribe the register into an electronic document and post it on the web. If possible, I'd like to try to archive the originals somewhere locally. I also want to print out the completed register and return a copy of it to the summit, so future ascentionists can enjoy reading the mountains recorded history. Maybe it's an ambitious project for me, but I think it will be rewarding.

We descended the chute using the numerous rappel stations and doing a bit of easy scrambling.down-climbing. I think we made 7 rappels over-all, and for the most part didn't have to leave additional gear/webbing as John had already left new stuff when he was up here a month ago.